What can the supervised internships in/on collective health tell us?

Abstract

In 2018, ten years after undergraduate courses in collective health have begun being offered in Brazil, there has been much discussion about the health worker’s performance in the work environment and their role among the various historically recognized health professions. Many of the possible actions are being developed in the obligatory internships present in the universities’ curricula. From this point, we understand that the internships can be seen as favorable places for the analysis of the profile of the public health workers who are graduating and the way in which the different areas that are part of collective health establish the necessary dialogue to form the desired profile, eminently multidisciplinary. Based on the authors’ experiences in the supervision of internships in collective health, the article will discuss the conflicts between the field’s areas during the establishment of the professional practice. In which ways do its lenses shape the field and the perspectives borne in practice environments? In this sense, inspired by the classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific, by Malinowski, we aim at reflecting on the public health workers’ role, what it entails and how it is performed, as well as about what workers say and think about what they do. Finally, we discuss the practice of Collective Health itself.